How you know you live with a gaming addict

Gamers: an odd breed that can easily spend 13 hours on one game only moving to go for a wee or to retrieve some food out of the oven. I’m not talking about those casual gamers that can play for a couple of hours then return back to normality -I’m talking about those that live, breathe and talk gaming. Those that queue for hours at midnight launches, those that when not playing will be reading and watching videos on how to play and those that simply cannot tear themselves away no matter how late it is.

Here are some sure-fire signs that show you are living with a gaming addict.

A gamers 5 minutes actually means 15! So when they say “yeah I’m coming I’ll be five minutes” you know you have to triple that before they eventually appear.

When they aren’t playing the game that they’ve finally torn themselves away from they end up heading straight to gaming sub-reddits or gaming websites to look up tactics and screenshots of someone else’s game.

You end up getting dragged to midnight launches of games like GTA V. You essentially give up your sleep to stand in a very long line of equally addicted gamers excitedly talking about how they have booked a week off work to complete the game.

When a game launches or a new expansion pack does come out you know you are not going to see that person for a good two weeks. This time is the perfect time to catch up with friends or to book yourself a little break away with family as your addicted partner is to disappear into the gaming world until they’re ready to come back out.

Games cannot simply just be played when you live with a gamer. It’s all about finding those terminals in Halo or levelling a character as quickly as possible to obtain an achievement. A game has to be played to it’s full potential with all achievements unlocked otherwise it’s simply incomplete.

Sales on online gaming clients like Steam are like the January sales for women – it gives gamers that same rush of adrenaline which makes them buy games they’re probably never going to play more than once but its only £4!!!

Get gamers together and my god they can talk; more than women in the WI! Hour long conversations about some arms or weapon they’ve just got on a character is about as interesting to a non-gaming addict as watching paint dry.

They steal all your internet when they decide to download a cheap game from the Xbox store – goodbye listening to Spotify or watching iplayer – you now have to wait until their crappy game is done!

Life is planned around gaming, so if your gamer has agreed to play with other online gamers one evening and you were hoping to go out then forget it. Nights out are to be planned now around your gamer’s gaming schedule.

Recognise any of these in your partner? Then unfortunately they too are an addict, lost to the money-making world of games.